In general, the transport of freight is performed in such a way that the owner of the freight directly entrusts the transport of the freight to a freight transport company or an independent transport service provider and pays transport charges, or in such a way that the owner of the freight commits the freight to a transport agent, the transport agent entrusts the transport of the freight to a transport service provider, and, if a contract is made, the transport agent receives agent fees from the transport service provider and the transport service provider receives transport charges from the owner of the freight.
However, currently, freight transport companies do not have transport vehicles enough to satisfy the requests of the owners of freight, and transport agents also do not provide freight transport services enough to satisfy the requests of the owners of freight due to lack of information about the owners of transport vehicles.
Accordingly, when a freight transport service requires a long time and a high cost, a problem arises in that excessive transport charges are requested or in some cases, the transport of freight is rejected.
Furthermore, since a transport agent to whom the transport of freight was entrusted, in turn, entrusts the transport of freight to anther transport agent, a plurality of transport agents intervenes in the transport of freight. Furthermore, the burden of additional agent fees is passed on to the owner of freight or the owner of a vehicle. Accordingly, the burden of logistic expenses of the owner of freight increases while the income of an independent transport service provider who transports freight decreases, so that a problem arises in that the profitability of the owner of freight and the profitability of the independent transport service provider are degraded.
Accordingly, since the independent transport service provider must ask a plurality of transport agents to entrust the transport of freight to him or her or move a long distance in an empty state in order to improve his or her profitability, he or she spends more time in obtaining freight information and moving around than in actually transporting freight, so that a problem arises in that independent transport service providers who have dangerous occupations requiring sufficient rests are always exposed to dangers because they cannot have sufficient sleep and rest.
In particular, most of the accidents that occur during the running of freight transport vehicles result from sleep or fatigue rather than poor driving skills. Meanwhile, most of freight transport vehicle accidents lead to disaster, which causes irreparable losses to the society and nation as well as the owners of vehicles and their families.
Meanwhile, according to recent statistics (complied by the Korea Transport Institute, and issued on Sep. 22, 2000), it is reported that the Korean domestic empty vehicle ratio is higher than those in advanced countries by about 10%. Accordingly, it is expected that when the empty vehicle ratio is decreased by 10%, a transport cost of about three trillion won can be saved.
However, in the Korean domestic transport market, although the empty vehicle ratio is high as described above, there are frequent cases where freight cannot be transported at a scheduled time because the owner of the freight cannot ensure an empty vehicle.
Accordingly, in order to transport freight at a scheduled time and reduce the empty vehicle ratio, there is a general trend toward a technology for sharing freight information (provided by the owners of freight) and empty vehicle information (provided by transport agents, transport service providers, and independent transport service providers) on-line, thereby handling the transport of freight at low cost and with high efficiency.